The Victriolic Nature of American Politics

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With the rise of conservative talk radio and and talk television on fox news, and then now social media, really anyone to it. One millimeter to the left of dead center, someone like joe byden is. So they've just kind of shifted over right up to the center line and said, these are all the enemy. Yeis i backyou go even directed against some of the people whom we treat as almost holy figures in america. Yes, i think so too. Your catalist there. We can't deny that what happened last month was absolutely unique in american experience. But if you take away last month's insurrection a, the victriolic nature of American politics

In episode 162 of The Michael Shermer Show, Michael speaks with one of the nation’s preeminent experts on economic policy, Benjamin Friedman, about his new book Religion and the Rise of Capitalism — a major reassessment of the foundations of modern economic thinking that explores the profound influence of an until-now unrecognized force — religion.

Critics of contemporary economics complain that belief in free markets — among economists as well as many ordinary citizens — is a form of religion. And, it turns out, that in a deeper, more historically grounded sense there is something to that idea. Contrary to the conventional historical view of economics as an entirely secular product of the Enlightenment, Benjamin Friedman demonstrates that religion exerted a powerful influence from the outset.